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MODERN  BELIEF  IN 
IMMORTALITY 


MODERN    BELIEF   IN 
IMMORTALITY 

BY 

Newman  Smyth 


NEW  YORK 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
1910 


&  US' 


Copyright,  1910,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


Published  March,  1910 


K2? 


v 


$ 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

This  little  book  had  its  origin  in  a  lecture  which 
was  given  on  the  Drew  foundation  at  Hackney  Col- 
lege of  the  University  of  London.  It  has  since  been 
recast  and  enlarged  in  order  that  in  this  form  it 
may  reach  the  general  public. 

The  thought  of  our  age  has  thrown  a  shadow  of 
unreality  over  the  belief  in  personal  immortality. 
There  are  many  who  ask  how  this  faith  may  be  in- 
telligently held  in  the  midst  of  modern  knowledge. 
To  all  such  readers,  who  would  have  a  reasonable 
hope  in  the  life  everlasting,  these  pages  are  now 
offered.  -^  c 


304099 


MODERN    BELIEF    IN 
IMMORTALITY 

MAN'S  belief  in  immortality  is 
still  essentially  the  same  as  it 
was  when  Socrates  trusted  himself  to 
it,  while  he  drank  the  fatal  hemlock. 
It  is  the  irrepressible  faith  of  man  in 
his  own  survival  value.  It  is  the  in- 
exhaustible confidence  of  our  human 
minds  and  hearts  in  our  power  to 
think  and  to  love  on  hereafter  because 
we  can  think  and  love  now.  Socrates' 
refusal  to  think  of  himself  as  dead  was 
the  supreme  self-affirmation  of  his  per- 
sonal life. 

Although  belief  in  the  future  life  re- 
mains the  same,  men's  conceptions  of 
it  change  from  age  to  age,  and  they 
must  be  adapted  to  the  general  knowl- 
edge of  the  times. 

[U 


•■  •  •      MODERN  BELIEF 

In  our  day  science  has  seemed  to 
throw  into  uncertainty  the  hope  of  per- 
sonal life  hereafter.  Much  unbelief 
lies  darkly  around  our  faith.  As,  when 
one  stands  directly  under  an  electric 
light  in  the  street,  he  can  see  distinctly 
everything  near  him,  but  the  dazzling 
little  light  just  above  him  renders  the 
sky  dark,  and  blots  out  the  stars;  so 
wdthin  the  circle  of  scientific  illumina- 
tion we  may  lose  vision  of  the  heavens. 
But  man  cannot  go  far  without  some 
guiding  sense  of  eternal  truths ;  and  the 
old  faiths,  though  sometimes  obscured, 
are  always  reappearing.  At  the  present 
time  a  widening  knowledge  of  ourselves 
and  the  universe  is  bringing  out  more 
clearly  some  reasons  for  the  human 
hope  of  the  life  to  come. 

It  is  quite  true  that  at  first  modern 
science  did  not  seem  to  be  a  friendly 
visitor  in  the  old  home  of  inherited  re- 
[2] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

ligious  beliefs.  Modern  astronomy  put 
the  heavens  far  from  us.  Modern 
physics  bound  all  things  together  in  a 
chain  of  unbroken  sequences.  Modern 
biology  traced  continuous  lines  of  life 
back  to  the  earliest  and  simplest  forms 
of  life  in  the  dust  of  the  earth.  A  mi- 
croscopic cell  is  found  to  contain  the 
potential  energy  of  all  birth  and  be- 
coming. And,  latest  of  all,  modern 
psychology,  turning  from  merely  intro- 
spective study  of  self-consciousness, 
and  seeking  to  become  one  of  the  exact 
sciences,  would  have  us  know  ourselves 
in  its  experimental  laboratories. 

So  much  new  knowledge  has  proved 
disconcerting  and  baffling  to  many  who 
would  not  willingly  be  dispossessed  of 
their  cherished  beliefs.  But  new  knowl- 
edge always  raises  new  questions;  and 
it  also  helps  us  over  some  old  difficul- 
ties. In  the  progress  of  knowledge  we 
[3] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

are  very  much  like  engineers  who 
should  begin  to  run  a  tunnel  through 
an  Alp.  If  they  should  lay  down  their 
tools  and  stop  work  part  way,  they 
would  only  have  burrowed  into  the 
darkness.  Give  them  time  and  pa- 
tience, let  them  continue  along  the  same 
true  lines  on  which  they  began;  and 
eventually  they  will  work  themselves 
out  again  into  the  light — the  same  light 
that  is  always  shining.  So  is  it  with 
our  scientific  investigations.  It  is  still 
the  little  knowledge,  as  Lord  Bacon 
said,  that  makes  atheists  of  us.  Partial 
researches  often  end  in  the  darkness  and 
dampness.  But  from  light  through  the 
dark  into  light;  from  God  through 
nature  unto  God;  from  the  Spirit 
through  human  history  to  the  Spirit; — 
such  is  the  way  and  the  toil  of  the  more 
patient  and  resourceful  thinking.  So 
the  new  natural  science,  carried  clear 
[41 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

through,  may  lead  out  to  a  new  spirit- 
uality. Doubt  may  settle  where  knowl- 
edge stops ;  but  hope  burns  bright  where 
reason  follows  truth  straight  on  and  on. 

It  is  not  now  too  much  to  say  that 
modern  science  has  pressed  forward 
far  enough  to  change  its  tone  of  denial, 
and  to  give  forth  a  more  reassuring  note 
for  religious  faith  and  hope.  Socrates 
might  gather  from  recent  researches 
into  the  structure  of  matter,  and  the 
possible  relations  of  body  and  mind, 
fresh  material  for  his  argument  for  im- 
mortality, if  he  were  here  inquiring  and 
conversing  with  us,  as  he  was  wont  to 
do  among  his  friends.  Our  natural 
sciences  would  not  dismay  Socrates; 
they  might  bring  much  fine  oil  for  him 
to  change  into  the  light  of  his  immortal 
hope. 

In  such  confidence  then  we  would 
search  our  modern  knowledge  for  any 
[5] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

light  it  may  throw  upon  our  belief  in 
man's  survival  after  death.  For  this 
purpose  the  first  question  for  us  to  ask 
is  whether  modern  inquiries  enable  us 
to  know  ourselves  better.  How  are  we 
to  think  of  the  personal  life?  How 
may  we  now  best  conceive  of  the  su- 
preme fact  of  personality  ? 

An  answer  will  be  forthcoming,  if 
we  take  from  modern  science  one  of 
its  ruling  ideas, — the  conception  of 
matter  in  terms  of  energy.  Natural 
science,  that  is,  no  longer  regards  a 
material  thing  merely  as  an  inert  cor- 
puscle, or  as  composed  of  so  many  in- 
dissoluble atoms.  It  does  not  indeed 
undertake  to  say  what  the  ultimate 
nature  of  anything  is;  it  recognizes 
different  things  by  what  they  do;  it 
knows  them  by  their  modes  of  action. 
They  are  forms  of  motion.  Thus  no 
one  knows  what  electricity  is;  but  a 
[6] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

vast  science  has  been  formed  and  util- 
ized from  investigation  of  its  waves  and 
lines  of  force.  The  physicist  in  the 
class-room  will  go  to  the  black-board 
and  use  complicated  mathematical  sym- 
bols and  equations  to  demonstrate  the 
properties  of  radium,  and  its  various 
transformations.  In  short,  science  has 
become  a  study  of  energetics.  Now, 
then,  we  would  accept  this  ruling  idea 
of  energy,  and  use  it  as  a  light  in  look- 
ing into  our  personal  life,  in  thinking  of 
our  minds  and  wills. 

It  would  carry  us  beyond  our  present 
purpose  to  discuss  critically  this  idea  in 
its  philosophical  bearings,  or  in  relation 
to  different  views  propounded  in  recent 
books  of  psychology.  But  we  must  be- 
gin with  this  conception  of  personal  life 
as  self-conscious  energy,  for  we  shall 
have  to  return  to  it  again  and  again  in 
our  reasoning  concerning  the  possible 

[7] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

continuance  of  the  personal  life  here- 
after. Its  meaning  may  become  plain- 
er as  we  proceed. 

In  this  way  we  are  to  think  of  our- 
selves as  centres  and  sources  of  energy. 
Our  self-conscious  life  is  one  continuous 
flow  of  energy,  ever  changing  its  forms 
of  feeling  and  thought,  yet  remaining 
throughout  the  same  distinctive  force  of 
mind  and  will.  We  have  been  ac- 
customed to  think  of  the  soul  as  though 
it  were  a  certain  fixed  substance,  some- 
thing intangible  and  unimaginable,  but 
a  substantial  entity.  It  has  been  re- 
garded as  a  half-materialized  ghost, 
retaining  a  semblance  of  the  body. 
It  has  been  imagined  to  be  an  ema- 
nation that  departs  from  the  body  at 
death;  and  apparitions  of  it  haunt 
men's  dreams.  In  philosophies  that 
have  been  swept  bare  of  superstitions, 
the  soul  is  still  left  in  the  background 

[8] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

of  consciousness  as  a  necessary  but 
undefinable  postulate  of  the  unity  of 
personal  being.  Lying  darkly  beneath 
our  consciousness  of  our  mental  proc- 
esses, the  soul  has  also  been  regarded 
as  bound  in  some  way  impossible  of 
detection  to  the  body.  But  the  newer 
psychology  has  relegated  to  the  lumber- 
room  of  outworn  ideas  all  this  old- 
fashioned  conception  of  the  soul.  As 
the  former  idea  of  a  specific  vital  force 
is  no  longer  recognized  in  the  bio- 
logical laboratories,  so  the  living  soul 
seems  to  have  disappeared  from  recent 
experimental  studies  of  mind  and  body. 
Not  only  in  our  busy  social  religion  do 
we  moderns  take  little  anxious  thought 
about  the  to-morrow  of  our  own  souls; 
as  Wilberforce  in  the  thick  of  the  eman- 
cipation conflict  once  replied  to  a  bigot 
that  he  was  so  concerned  about  those 
poor  negroes  that  he  had  no  time  to 

[9] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

think  of  his  soul;  more  than  this,  now- 
adays the  confident  physiological  psy- 
chologist, in  the  midst  of  his  investi- 
gations of  bodily  and  mental  actions 
and  reactions,  does  not  seem  to  know 
whether  he  has  any  soul  left  worth 
thinking  about.  He  has  been  occupied 
of  late  in  telling  us  much  that  the  an- 
cients never  knew  concerning  the  time 
reactions  of  sensations,  the  rising  and 
vanishing  of  ideas,  like  bubbles,  in  the 
stream  of  consciousness,  the  subliminal 
self,  and  so  on;  he  has  displayed  great 
ingenuity  in  examining  the  springs  and 
wires  of  the  physiological  apparatus  of 
our  mental  processes  and  results.  And 
he  may  rest  for  a  while  scientifically  con- 
tent to  conceive  of  himself  as  the  sum- 
total  of  the  manifold  acts  and  states  that 
he  has  succeeded  in  disclosing,  although 
how  he  can  sum  himself  up  at  all  he 
cannot  tell,  and  he  prefers  to  put  aside 

[10] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

such  inquiry  as  too  metaphysical  for 
his  exact  science  of  mental  phenomena. 
Nevertheless  the  ancients  raised  the 
first  and  the  last  question  concerning 
man's  knowledge  of  himself,  when  they 
made  that  inquiry;  and  our  most  ad- 
vanced mental  science  is  brought  to  a 
stand-still,  as  before  a  dead  wall,  when 
confronted  with  this  question  of  fact 
concerning  the  unity  of  the  personal  life. 
If  we  begin  and  end  with  such  investi- 
gation into  ourselves  from  the  physio- 
logical side  only,  we  shall  find  ourselves 
left,  as  it  were,  in  the  middle  of  the 
tunnel.  But  self-introspection  does  not 
stop  with  results  that  leave  us  wholly 
in  the  dark  as  to  the  nature  of  our  own 
life.  The  more  we  learn  of  the  rela- 
tions between  body  and  mind,  the  more 
we  find  reason  to  credit  our  instinctive 
sense  that  this  personal  life  which  we 
know,  cannot  be  wholly  accounted  for 
[ii] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

by  a  purely  physical  theory  of  it.  We 
need  not  indeed  revert  to  former  no- 
tions of  the  soul,  or  reject  any  new 
knowledge  of  the  interdependence  of 
mind  and  matter  in  our  consciousness; 
but  rather  we  need  to  think  evolution- 
ary ideas  through,  and  to  learn  much 
more  in  the  newer  ways  concerning  our- 
selves, if  it  is  possible.  The  way  out 
for  a  true  faith  is  always  the  way  for- 
ward. This  is  now  becoming  clearly 
evident.  For  just  when  it  seemed  as 
though  science  were  about  to  reduce 
the  spiritual  entirely  to  the  material, 
matter  itself  escaped  from  all  previous 
conceptions  of  it;  and  the  old  atomic 
theory,  that  had  come  to  be  regarded 
as  the  end  of  all  wisdom  in  that  direc- 
tion, has  been  broken  up,  and  trans- 
formed into  subtler  and  more  ethereal 
conceptions  of  matter.  The  atom  is  no 
longer  regarded  as  indivisible;  it  can 
[12] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

disintegrate  into  something  still  more 
elemental.  It  is  matter  still,  but  a 
different  kind  of  matter  than  we  had 
supposed.  All  this  new  research  leaves 
us  as  before  in  a  system  of  natural  law; 
but  it  appears  to  be  a  more  open  system. 
Nature  is  not  iron-clad,  and  inaccessible 
to  waves  of  influence  from  a  higher 
realm  beyond  these  visible  horizons. 
Energies  that  are  not  of  space  may  enter 
into  space;  even  as  thought  in  us  has 
no  spatial  dimensions.  There  are  as- 
tronomical indications  that  all  the  stars 
are  numbered,  and  the  constellations 
are  grouped  within  the  attractions  of  a 
finite  universe.  What,  then,  is  there 
conceivable  around  and  beyond  them 
all?  What  is  there  not  of  them  but 
within  them  all?  In  what  infinity  of 
Mind  and  Will  do  all  things  exist? 
Search  the  material  universe  through 
and  through,  as  far  as  thought  may  go, 

[13] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

and  nature  discovers  itself  to  be  an  open 
system;  at  the  confines  of  all  knowl- 
edge it  does  not  close  around  us  as  a 
prison-house;  we  stand  as  before  open 
windows,  breathing  a  vital  air,  and 
looking  out  into  vistas  of  light  beyond 
light. 

So,  likewise,  a  gross  materialistic  view 
seemed  at  first  to  be  confirmed  by  the 
demonstration  of  concurrent  changes  of 
the  brain  in  every  action  of  the  mind. 
But  we  are  now  understanding  that 
what  has  been  proved  is  the  perfection 
of  the  brain  as  an  organ  of  mind.  And 
even  from  the  point  of  view  of  modern 
surgery,  there  are  not  wanting  inti- 
mations that  there  is  much  more  to  be 
learned  concerning  the  mind's  power  to 
control  the  brain  as  its  organ — its 
power  even,  when  some  parts  of  the 
brain  have  been  injured,  to  avail  itself 
of  some  unused  area  of  its  brain,  and 

[14] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

by  intelligent  training  and  patience  to 
organize  some  other  brain-cells  and 
their  connections  for  its  use.  Not  to 
enter,  however,  into  these  recondite  and 
as  yet  not  fully  determined  inquiries, 
it  may  fairly  be  said  that  modern  psy- 
chology, working  farther  through  its 
physiological  stage,  gives  promise  of 
coming  forth  more  spiritually  minded. 

We  are  not,  then,  in  our  day  to  lose 
our  own  souls  at  the  bidding  of  a  par- 
tial science.  There  is  no  good  and 
sufficient  reason  to  suppose  that  in  our 
free,  pulsing,  personal  life,  we  have  been 
put  together  like  so  many  pieces  in  a 
mechanical  assembling-room;  a  more 
hopeful  task  awaits  us  when,  in  the  light 
of  the  modern  idea  of  energy,  we  pro- 
ceed to  inquire,  What  is  this  personal 
kind  of  energy  ?  What  is  this  potency 
of  mind,  this  dynamic  of  will,  of  which 
man  is   self-conscious?     For  personal 

[15] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

power  is  the  culminating  fact  of  nature. 
The  human  will  is  the  summation  of 
the  struggling  forces  of  evolution  before 
it;  self-consciousness  is  the  focus  of 
all  the  light  of  life. 

This  dominant  personal  energy,  it 
is  to  be  observed,  is  at  once  the  best 
known  and  the  least  known  of  all  the 
powers.  It  is  best  known  because  we 
are  immediately  perceptive  of  it  in 
every  act;  it  is  the  least  known  because 
there  is  nothing  known  before  it  into 
which  we  can  resolve  our  self-perceptive 
life.  By  our  inner  possession  of  it  we 
understand  other  forms  of  energy  in  the 
world  without  us;  but  they  do  not  serve 
to  interpret  it  to  ourselves.  We  could 
not  think  of,  or  call  by  name,  the  forces 
of  nature,  if  we  had  not  first  become 
aware  of  will  within  ourselves.  But 
that  is  to  be  derived  from  nothing  be- 
fore our  own  action.     It  comes  to  us, 

[16] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

this  rich  reality  of  energizing  life,  very 
much  as  Melchizedec  came  to  Israel  of 
old,  without  father  or  mother,  and  with 
a  blessing  from  the  most  High.  Yet 
there  is  one  way  in  which  we  may  ap- 
prehend it  truly,  and  grow  in  our  knowl- 
edge of  it.  It  is  the  way  opened  by 
science,  which  knows  things  by  ob- 
serving what  they  do.  Here,  likewise, 
in  knowing  what  our  personal  being 
is,  we  have  to  watch  its  behavior.  We 
need  to  learn  all  that  we  may  of  the 
nature  of  mind  by  observing  its  conduct 
in  the  conditions  amid  which  it  now 
works.  You  are  aware  of  yourself  as 
you  think  and  will;  you  know  yourself 
as  the  same  self  throughout  all  your 
thinking  and  willing.  Whatever  the 
ultimate  entity  may  be,  the  self  is 
known  to  itself  in  action.  Personality 
is  manifested  to  itself  immediately,  and 
then  to  others,  through  its  energizing. 

[17] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

Before  pursuing,  however,  the  line  of 
thought  just  suggested,  we  pause  for  a 
moment  to  observe  the  better  standing- 
ground  for  belief  in  a  possible  continu- 
ance of  life  beyond  death,  which  is  to 
be  gained  when  we  leave  one  side  the 
common  idea  of  the  soul  as  a  substance 
of  some  kind,  and  take  the  more  recent 
idea  of  a  spiritual  energy  as  our  point 
of  departure;  when  we  begin,  not  with 
the  metaphysical  idea  of  being,  or 
some  spiritual  entity,  but  rather  with 
our  knowledge  of  ourselves  as  so  much 
actual  personal  energy.  In  this  way 
of  looking  at  it,  an  immediate  advan- 
tage is  that  we  are  at  once  relieved  from 
the  confusion  that  comes  over  us  when 
we  try  to  imagine  how  this  invisible, 
but  substantial  soul-entity  can  exist 
either  in  the  body  or  out  of  it.  This 
idea  of  a  soul,  however  sublimated, 
has   something  still   material    clinging 

[18] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

to  it;  and  everything  physical,  so  far 
as  we  know,  is  subject  to  dissolution. 
The  idea  of  a  pure  substance,  purged 
of  all  materiality,  is  hard  to  precipi- 
tate in  any  mental  analysis;  philoso- 
phers have  always  labored  over  the 
notion  of  substance  as  the  reality  be- 
neath all  phenomenal  existence;  when 
they  seem  to  catch  it  in  some  net 
of  fine  words,  it  flies  away  into  some 
abstraction  that  cannot  be  grasped. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  the  philosophic 
idea  of  an  absolute  or  pure  substance 
has  not  had  its  use,  and  may  not  be 
of  value  in  metaphysical  speculation; 
but  it  is  directly  to  our  present  pur- 
pose to  notice  how  well  we  may  do 
without  it  in  the  effort  to  lay  hold 
of  our  true  life  and  its  power  to 
continue  in  future  conditions  for  its 
activity.  We  lay  aside  some  obstinate 
questionings  concerning  man's  possible 

[19] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

survival  elsewhere  and  otherwise,  when 
we  give  up  the  futile  attempt  to  imagine 
how  in  a  shadowy  or  half-materialized 
way  a  soul  may  exist;  when  rather  we 
reflect  how  inconceivable  it  is  to  sup- 
pose that  such  living  spiritual  energies 
as  are  incarnate  and  radiantly  active 
in  the  intelligent  and  purposeful  life  of 
a  true  man,  can  be  brought  to  a  sudden 
stop  by  any  accident  from  without,  or 
ever  cease  to  be  self-contained  and 
masterful,  as  they  have  begun  to  be 
even  in  these  bodily  limitations.  The 
idea  is  a  contradiction  of  the  law  of  the 
conservation  of  personal  energy. 

Doubtless  this  way  of  regarding  it 
will  raise  difficulties  enough  of  its  own ; 
but  they  will  arise  from  inability  to 
conceive  how  this  can  be;  they  will  not 
be  impossibilities  of  reason.  In  this 
view  of  personality  as  undying  energy 
we  shall  at  least  escape  from  the  old 

[20] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

question  as  to  the  location  of  the  point 
in  the  body  where  the  soul  resides ;  we 
shall  not  be  embarrassed  by  the  medi- 
aeval puzzle,  how  many  spirits  may 
dance  upon  the  point  of  a  needle. 
Modern  science  is  not  about  to  put  the 
spiritual  self  out  of  existence  because  it 
has  led  us  to  abandon  the  traditional 
notion  of  soul  atoms,  any  more  than  it 
puts  matter  out  of  existence  because  it 
has  given  up  the  received  theory  of  ma- 
terial atoms.  Indeed,  why  is  it  more 
necessary  for  religious  belief  in  our- 
selves and  our  God  to  define  what  Spirit 
is,  than  it  is  necessary  for  natural 
science  in  its  working  creed  to  define 
what  matter  is  ?  In  either  case  we  know 
what  is  experienced;  we  know  what 
it  is  by  what  it  does.  As  we  have  just 
indicated,  and  should  keep  in  mind, 
the  natural  sciences,  strictly  speaking, 
are  studies  of  conduct.     Physics  is  a 

[21] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

study  of  the  behavior  of  the  elements; 
biology  a  study  of  the  behavior  of  living 
cells;  in  short  the  whole  evolutionary 
philosophy  is  a  great  generalization 
from  the  uniform  course  of  conduct  of 
nature.  So  may  theology  be  a  study 
of  the  persistent  conduct  of  the  spirit. 
From  established  modes  of  behavior  we 
may  draw  inferences  concerning  the 
constitution  or  character  of  things  natu- 
ral or  spiritual ;  but  in  neither  case  does 
partial  or  only  inferential  knowledge  of 
the  nature  of  matter  or  of  Spirit  prevent 
us  from  knowing  truly  what  it  does, 
and  has  efficient  power  to  do.  The 
physicist,  for  instance,  has  succeeded 
in  carrying  his  demonstration  of  ele- 
mental matter  so  far  back  that  he  will 
speak  clearly  to  himself  of  the  primary 
materialization  of  the  universal  ether 
as  an  electron;  that  is  to  say,  as  it  is 
easy  to  see,  a  possible  whirl  of  the  per- 

[22] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

feet  solid,  elastic,  ethereal  liquid,  bear- 
ing a  charge  of  negative  electricity  im- 
mersed in  a  positive;  so  a  theologian 
might  be  indulged  if  he  should  at- 
tempt to  define  his  idea  of  a  spirit  as 
an  individual  form  of  a  spiritual  Omni- 
presence, in  which  it  has  its  being, 
while  carrying  in  itself  a  limited  charge 
of  will.  In  both  directions,  while  defi- 
nitions may  serve  a  working  purpose 
as  symbols,  and  may  be  formed  from 
the  facts  of  behavior  which  are  within 
our  experience,  they  carry  us  beyond 
our  conceptual  powers;  we  cannot 
visualize  the  ultimate  nature  either  of 
matter  or  mind. 

From  interesting  speculations  in  these 
directions,  we  turn  now  to  consider 
more  closely  what  promise  of  continued 
life  hereafter  may  be  observed  in  the 
actual  working  now  and  here  of  the  per- 
sonal energy  of  man. 
[23] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

Several  qualities  in  the  conduct  of 
personal  life  are  distinctive  and  of 
prophetic  significance.  Man's  mental 
conduct  distinguishes  him  specifically 
from  all  animate  existence  before  him. 

In  self-conscious  activity  we  are  aware 
of  a  unifying  energy,  which  makes 
and  keeps  us  ourselves.  Normally  we 
are  known  to  ourselves  not  as  a  mere 
mathematical  series  or  sum  of  mental 
sequences,  but  as  personal  wholes. 
This  integrity  of  being,  this  wholeness 
of  mental  experience,  is  constitutive  of 
our  personal  individuality;  it  is  not 
broken  by  sleep,  it  is  undestroyed  by 
the  effacing  touch  of  time,  it  endures 
though  memory  fails,  it  persists  while 
death  approaches;  it  remains  indissolu- 
ble so  long  as  any  trace  of  consciousness 
continues.  Now,  this  individual  whole- 
ness of  personality  is  an  outstanding 
spiritual   fact;    it  is  positive  and  su- 

[24] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

preme.  No  outward  environment,  no 
favoring  circumstance,  could  have  be- 
stowed it  upon  a  being  who  was  not 
first  in  himself  capable  of  it.  His  self- 
hood has  grown  from  its  own  root  in 
the  unseen  and  the  eternal.  The  con- 
tinuous stream  of  self-conscious  life 
flows  from  some  original  fount  that  is 
itself  underived  and  eternal.  So,  at  all 
events,  we  are  compelled  to  conclude 
by  the  failure  of  every  successive  at- 
tempt to  explain  personal  energy  of  be- 
ing from  any  purely  material  causation. 
Such  material  explanations  break  down 
sooner  or  later  before  some  fact  of  our 
self-knowledge;  and  they  are  swept 
away  by  any  rising  flood  of  moral  life 
and  power. 

There  are,  however,  certain  abnor- 
mal mental  conditions  in  which  the 
identity  of  personal  life  seems  to  be 
interrupted,    and   sometimes    for   con- 

[25] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

siderable  intervals  entirely  lost.  There 
are  also  instances  of  dual  personality, 
in  which  one  may  be  possessed  with 
several  seemingly  different  selves.  All 
such  intermittent  mental  conditions 
are  connected  with  more  or  less  obvi- 
ous nervous  derangements,  or  other 
recondite  physiological  changes.  Do 
these  breaks  in  conscious  personal  iden- 
tity, accompanying  as  they  do  physio- 
logical processes,  bring  into  question 
the  idea  of  an  underlying  and  perma- 
nent self?  They  certainly  do  indicate 
an  intimate  interdependence  between 
mind  and  body,  the  very  subtlety  and 
complexity  of  which  open  more  future 
possibilities  of  mental  possession  and 
mastery  of  matter  than  they  close. 
Such  remarkable  abnormal  instances 
not  only  show  how  much  remains  to  be 
understood  before  we  shall  know  the 
farthest  reach  of  our  powers;   but  also 

[26] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

they  indicate  that,  when  we  shall  know 
ourselves  in  the  full  extent  of  our  physi- 
cal relations,  we  may  discover  ourselves 
to  be  endowed  with  aptitudes  and  facul- 
ties for  spiritual  perception  and  activity 
as  yet  unused  and  undeveloped.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  these  abnormal 
phenomena  of  personal  consciousness 
tend  to  confirm  more  than  to  disprove 
a  latent  and  potential  self-identifying 
personality.  They  are  interruptions, 
not  irrevocable  losses  of  identity.  Usu- 
ally, after  a  time,  the  person  comes  to 
himself.  The  true  self  recalls  the  wan- 
dering self.  The  man  is  himself  again. 
If  this  resumption  of  an  interrupted  and 
in  some  instances  seemingly  utterly 
lost  selfhood,  can  occur  in  this  body 
and  this  side  death,  a  presumption  is 
thereby  brought  into  the  evidence  for 
the  survival  of  the  same  self  through 
death,  and  in  some  intelligent  subjec- 
[27] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

tion  of  the  elementary  conditions  of 
conscious  life  beyond  the  grave.  It 
would  carry  us  too  far  from  our  im- 
mediate purpose  to  enter  into  a  detailed 
analysis  of  these  outlying  phenomena  of 
intermittent  and  plural  consciousness; 
it  is  enough  for  our  reasoning  to  em- 
phasize the  fact  that  all  such  phenom- 
ena are  far  from  being  evidences  of 
our  utter  materiality;  they  look  toward 
spiritual  freedom  rather  than  toward 
physical  bondage;  for  they  indicate  a 
self-regenerative  power  in  personality. 

This  leads  us  to  notice  another  dis- 
tinctive quality  of  the  personal  life — 
its  self-formative  energy. 

In  a  very  real  sense  every  man  is 
self-made.  He  has  no  little  to  do  in 
making  his  own  soul.  We  are  wont  to 
say  that  one  has  a  soul  from  his  birth. 
Then  we  wonder  just  when  the  soul 
enters  into  the  body.     This  whole  way 

[28] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

of  thinking  about  it  is  too  mechanical 
and  confusing;  as  though  the  body 
were  a  house,  and  the  soul  a  tenant  com- 
ing into  it  when  it  is  ready  for  him  to 
begin  house-keeping  in  it.  Evolution- 
ary thought  is  truer  than  this  to  the 
divine  law  of  growth.  It  recognizes 
the  law  of  co-ordinate  growth,  the  fact 
that  God  has  made  things  to  grow  to- 
gether for  some  far-off  end.  It  traces 
lines  of  parallel  development  not  only 
between  different  parts  of  organisms, 
but  also  between  the  entire  physical  and 
mental  sides  of  life.  The  beginnings 
of  intelligence  lie  far  back.  Some 
botanists  even  discern  preliminary  signs 
of  intelligence  in  the  apex  of  the  root 
of  a  plant;  and  biologists  notice  in  the 
behavior  of  the  simplest  microscopic 
organisms  indications  of  a  capacity  to 
learn  by  experiment  and  to  direct  their 
motions.     The  determinants   of  mind 

[29] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

entered  the  creation  long  before  man 
came  on  the  scene.  An  infant  of  days 
has  inborn  capacity  to  become  a  definite 
spiritual  individuality;  it  is  a  soul  in  the 
making.  That  is  a  spiritual  germ  and 
birth.  At  what  time,  in  what  first  acts 
of  distinct  consciousness  and  will,  it 
becomes  a  self-centred  soul,  a  closed 
circle,  as  it  were,  of  definite  personality 
— this  occurs  before  any  memory  of  it, 
and  is  hidden  from  us  behind  the  veil 
of  our  lowly  origins.  But  the  full- 
grown  spiritual  individuality  is  the  final 
and  positive  fact  of  experience. 

Moreover,  we  know  that  in  us  per- 
sonal life  is  a  constant  process  of  self- 
integration.  We  must  be  always 
busy  with  ourselves  in  bringing  di- 
verse elements  of  our  experience  day 
by  day  into  working  and  happy  har- 
mony, preserving  amid  all  changes 
our    whole-heartedness.       All    natural 

[30] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

growth  in  some  sense  does  that;  evo- 
lution is  integration;  but  this  natural 
force  of  life  in  man's  mental  and 
moral  self-enlargement  and  self-preser- 
vation is  raised  to  its  highest  pow- 
er. Do  we  not  have  to  learn,  often 
through  hard  discipline  and  severe  self- 
control,  how  to  keep  our  poise  of  spirit, 
to  maintain  a  cheerful  whole-hearted- 
ness  amid  baffling  changes,  and  some- 
times heart-breaking  shocks? — in  en- 
during which  we  may  be  sorely  bruised, 
cast  down  but  not  destroyed;  and  from 
which,  if  we  have  truly  lived,  we  shall 
come  forth  ourselves  again,  but  glori- 
fied.    True  life  makes  us  whole. 

Thus  the  divine  gift  to  man  is  not  a 
ready-made  and  finished  soul;  it  is  the 
spiritual  power  to  make  one's  self 
through  life  and  death  ever  more  ca- 
pacious of  love  and  heaven.  It  is 
the    renewing    self-creative    power    of 

[31] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

the  spirit  which  is  in  a  man.  By 
this  spirit  and  its  exercise  nature  in 
man  is  lifted  up  to  the  divine  from 
whence  it  came.  Surely  such  God- 
likeness  is  something  supernal — a  final 
superlative  of  personal  being  made 
after  the  power  of  an  endless  life; 
it  is  not  to  be  scattered  and  lost,  as 
though  it  were  a  mere  sublimation 
of  some  natural  force,  such  as  gravi- 
tation or  chemical  affinity.  Man  can 
make  himself  a  devil  or  a  saint;  he 
cannot  unmake  himself  into  a  beast 
that  perishes. 

Another  character  of  personal  energy 
is  intimately  associated  with  that  just 
observed.  It  is  power  to  make  its  own 
environment.  To  a  large  though  not 
unlimited  extent  personal  life  may  form 
and  transform  its  environment.  This 
holds  true  of  the  power  of  mind  over 
its     immediate     bodily     environment. 

[32] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

Thought  has  much  to  do  with  health. 
Just  how  much,  just  where  the  trans- 
forming, re-creative  power  of  mind  over 
its  present  embodiment  begins  or  ends, 
is  not  as  yet  a  matter  of  exact  science; 
but  the  fact  that  it  certainly  has  some 
such  power,  whatever  may  be  the  ex- 
tent of  it,  is  a  fact  of  daily  experience. 

It  seems  to  be  a  primary  and  general 
power  of  organic  matter  to  repair  in- 
juries and  to  remake  lost  parts.  Broad- 
ly speaking,  in  proportion  as  animal 
forms  have  become  more  highly  organ- 
ized and  differentiated,  this  regenera- 
tive virtue  has  been  limited;  lower  or- 
ganisms show  a  far  more  general  and 
diffused  power  to  heal  themselves  than 
our  bodies  possess.  Such  loss  is  part 
of  the  cost  of  our  advancement.  We, 
however,  have  gained  a  higher  power 
where  we  have  lost  the  lower.  For  in 
a  purposeful  life,  and  to  a  degree  un- 


MODERN  BELIEF 

paralleled  in  the  animal  world,  a  per- 
sonal being  may  create  his  own  en- 
vironment, make  his  own  situations, 
and  change  his  world  into  a  heaven  or 
hell.  What  preternatural  power  is  this 
— what  culmination  of  spiritual  energy 
within  the  natural — which  may  thus 
create  the  light  or  the  darkness  of 
its  own  world;  which  may  change 
a  paradise  into  a  desert,  or  turn  a 
wilderness  into  a  land  of  springs  and 
blossoming  ? 

What  is  this  transcendent  energy  for 
good  or  evil  which  can  lift  itself  up 
against  heaven  and  blot  out  the  sun 
from  its  sky;  or,  humbling  itself  as  in 
the  presence  of  One  mightier  than  it, 
awaken  into  a  holy  dawn  of  new  love 
and  life  ?  Truly  in  the  exceeding  great 
and  precious  promise  of  such  life  we 
become  partakers  of  the  divine  nature; 
as  was  said  by  that  Galilean  fisherman 

[34] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

who   had   become   an   apostle   of   the 
Son  of  God. 

We  have  thus  far  been  uncovering 
the  foundations  which  are  laid  in  nat- 
ure for  the  establishment  of  the  hu- 
man faith  in  the  continuance  of  the 
personal  life.  We  build  our  hope  of 
immortality  upon  firm  ground  when 
we  rest  upon  the  fundamental  fact  of 
personality  as  the  greatest  power  in  the 
known  world.  There  is  nothing  in 
science  to  contradict  or  to  render  un- 
natural this  spiritual  expectation  of 
life.  We  may  now  proceed,  therefore, 
to  consider  what  possibilities  may  lie 
open  for  the  active  exercise  of  our  per- 
sonal energy  in  relation  to  other  physi- 
cal or  external  conditions  of  existence 
hereafter. 

At  this  point  we  meet  at  once  the 
old  question,  With  what  body  shall  we 
[351 


MODERN  BELIEF 

come?  Or,  to  put  it  in  its  modern 
form,  What  are  the  relations,  present 
and  prospective,  between  this  ener- 
gizing selfhood — this  personal  focus 
of  mental  and  moral  power — and  the 
universe  of  external  forces  ?  If  our 
immediate  connection  with  these  ex- 
ternal forces  is  broken  by  the  death  of 
the  body,  shall  this  self-centred,  unify- 
ing spiritual  energy,  of  which  we  are 
conscious,  prove  masterful  enough  to 
find  or  to  make  for  itself  other  living 
conditions  amid  these  complex  and  in- 
finitely subtle  forces  of  the  universe? 
In  fine,  has  personal  life  attained  in 
any  of  us  survival  value,  with  capacity 
for  further  and  freer  existence  in  vital 
touch  with  an  external  universe?  Put 
in  this  way,  the  conception  of  some 
future  embodiment  seems  more  natural. 
The  answer  to  such  questioning  be- 
gins with  the  recognition  of  the  present 

[36] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

value  of  the  body  to  mind.  This  is  a 
generally  admitted,  but  too  ignored 
truth,  the  full  significance  of  which 
should  be  apprehended.  Instead  of 
puzzling  ourselves  overmuch  by  asking 
how  mind  and  body  can  exist  together 
hereafter,  we  may  wonder,  rather,  how 
mind  and  some  body  can  ever  be  ex- 
pected to  live  apart.  For  so  far  as  we 
can  perceive,  matter  and  mind  were 
made  to  exist  together.  An  embodied 
spirit  is  the  natural  end  of  the  creation. 
The  poet-philosopher  Herder  caught 
in  a  fine  phrase  a  great  truth  when 
he  said  embodiment  is  the  end  of  all 
God's  ways  on  earth.  Not  spirit  alone, 
nor  body  only,  but  mind  and  body, 
of  twain  made  one — spirit  in  sensible 
communion  with  nature — the  outward 
world  attaining  its  end  in  the  mental 
appreciation  and  delight  in  it, — this, 
and  nothing  less   desirable   and   pure 

[37] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

than  this,  is  the  evident  fulfilment  of 
creation.  These  two,  nature  and  mind, 
have  a  natural  affinity  for  one  another; 
each  has  been  prepared  and  fitted  for 
the  other.  One  might  say  this  match 
was  made  in  heaven.  It  is  the  sacra- 
ment of  the  natural  and  the  spiritual  in 
man;  and  what  God  has  thus  joined 
together  in  life,  let  no  vain  wisdom  of 
ours  put  asunder. 

Reflect  at  what  cost  these  bodies  have 
been  prepared  for  us.  Innumerable 
ages  have  been  spent  in  lifting  the  body 
to  its  present  high  estate,  in  fashioning 
the  elements  into  human  form  and 
comeliness;  yet  there  are  many  who 
say  of  this  fair  fulfilment  of  the  age-long 
struggle  and  perfecting  of  living  matter, 
"It  is  naught."  Surpassing  mediaeval 
contempt  for  the  flesh,  a  modern  pietism 
hesitates  not  to  pronounce  judgment 
upon  this  most  highly  organized  work 
[38] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

of  the  Almighty  as  though  it  had  no  ob- 
jective reality,  and  were  of  no  value  in 
the  eye  of  the  spiritual  man.  Break- 
ing idealism  off  from  contact  with  the 
material  world,  as  a  dream  has  no 
touch  with  actuality,  it  would  have  us 
make  believe  that  external  things  are 
only  as  we  think  them  to  be,  even  a 
salutary  warning  of  pain  but  an  er- 
ror of  thought  not  to  be  heeded,  and 
the  body  in  our  sensible  communion 
through  it  with  nature  a  hinderance 
rather  than  a  means  of  spiritual  union 
with  God.  Shall  vanity  of  words  mock 
the  good  gift  of  the  Creator?  In 
spiritual  exaltation  shall  we  regard  the 
Lord  of  all  as  beholding  the  consum- 
mate product  of  the  evolution  of  the 
divine  idea  of  body  in  its  union  with 
spirit,  and  saying,  "I  have  labored  in 
vain;  I  have  spent  my  strength  for 
naught"  ?    More  humbly  let  a  true  and 

[39] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

reverent  science  make  a  new  appraisal 
of  the  eternal  value  of  some  body  to 
spirit. 

Our  present  embodiment  has  the 
value  of  a  thought  of  God  that  has  been 
objectified  and  rendered  visible.  An 
artist  can  depict  his  vision  on  the  can- 
vas; the  poet  can  give  form  to  his 
imagination;  human  love  can  put  itself 
into  a  word,  not  to  be  recalled,  for  an- 
other to  have  and  to  hold.  It  is  of  the 
very  essence  and  flame  of  spiritual 
energy  that  it  must  make  itself  felt  and 
visible  to  another.  Thought  and  love 
will  and  can  be  objectified  to  others, 
living  revealed  and  embodied  in  word 
and  deed,  in  form  and  color,  in  litera- 
ture, art,  and  song.  Shall  God  be  less 
than  man?  Can  God  do  less  with 
the  divine  ideas  than  man  may  do  in 
the  expression  of  his  thoughts  ?  If  the 
artist  can  render  visible  to  others  the 

[40] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

loveliness  in  which  he  delights,  surely 
the  Father  of  spirits,  who  has  given  us 
eyes  to  see,  has  made  also  the  landscape 
which  is  to  be  seen,  new  every  morning 
and  fresh  every  evening;  and  both  the 
human  eye  that  sees,  and  the  nature 
which  is  seen,  have  value  in  his  sight. 
God  has  brought  both  nature  and  us 
into  actual  though  dependent  existence 
before  himself;  and  God's  word  once 
spoken  is  not  to  be  repented  of-  What 
God  does,  he  does  forever. 

As  we  reflect  upon  this,  it  needs  but 
little  scientific  consideration  to  enable 
one  to  apprehend  the  priceless  value 
of  some  sensitive  and  perceptive  em- 
bodiment to  the  inner  life.  We  know, 
for  example,  that  the  human  brain  has 
been  organized  and  perfected  at  incal- 
culable cost.  It  is  a  vast  distance,  for 
which  we  have  no  measurement,  from 
the  beginning  of  days  when  the  Spirit 

[41] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

brooded  over  chaos,  and  when  from 
some  far  mystery  of  nebulous  light  the 
sun  was  gathered  and  the  earth  took 
form,  on  through  successive  cycles  of 
preparation  to  the  age  of  man,  who 
finds  ready  for  his  perceptive  intelli- 
gence a  system  of  brain-cells  and  their 
intricate  connections,  wherein  living 
matter  has  attained  a  microscopic  or- 
der, and  a  harmony  more  marvellous 
than  the  constellations  of  the  skies.  For 
his  possession  and  use  there  has  been 
wrought  out  this  intricate  brain  system, 
which  shall  transmit  every  ray  of  in- 
fluence from  without,  and  prove  re- 
sponsive to  slightest  touch  of  every 
passing  thought  from  within.  The  val- 
uation of  this  ultimate  adaptation  of 
matter  to  spirit  will  be  enhanced  as 
biology  traces  the  fine  processes  of  its 
development  and  its  attuning  as  the  in- 
strument of  mind.     This  appreciation 

[42] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

of  it  will  be  still  further  increased  if  we 
study  the  natural  history  of  the  forma- 
tion and  adaptation  of  a  single  faculty 
or  sense,  such  as  the  power  of  speech 
or  vision. 

Human  speech  was  no  sudden  attain- 
ment; language  no  extempore  effort  of 
nature.  It  has  been  said  with  wisdom, 
as  well  as  wit,  that  the  reason  why  ani- 
mals do  not  speak  is  because  they  have 
nothing  to  say.  When  mind  in  man 
had  learned  something  to  be  said,  it 
found  organs  of  speech  sufficiently  de- 
veloped to  say  it.  The  increasing  ur- 
gency of  mind,  finding  the  organs  of 
speech  growing  for  its  use,  created  the 
language  of  thought.  There  was  here 
a  parallelism  of  development,  so-called; 
one  of  those  suggestive  parallelisms — 
that  is,  developments  along  different 
lines  converging  toward  a  future  end 
— which  are  indicative  of  a  directive 

[43] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

thought  in  evolution.  The  end  finally 
attained  justifies  the  cost  of  the  ages 
spent  in  reaching  it;  language  is  a  gift 
of  inestimable  price. 

Another  instance  is  the  inestimable 
worth  of  the  sense  of  sight.  One  of  the 
fascinating  chapters  of  natural  history- 
is  the  story  of  the  growth  and  perfect- 
ing of  the  eye.  It  is  fortunately  a  con- 
tinuous story,  running  through  several 
stages  of  development;  and  with  in- 
creasing interest  we  may  read  from  its 
beginning  the  life  history  of  the  organ  of 
sight.  The  scientific  story,  one  might 
call  it  the  natural  romance  of  the  growth 
of  the  eye,  begins  with  its  lowly  origin 
in  the  humblest  walk  of  life.  At  first 
the  sense  of  sight  came  without  obser- 
vation into  the  kingdom  of  nature.  It 
began  as  a  mere  point  of  the  external 
membrane  or  skin  somewhat  more  sen- 
sitive to  light  than  other  parts.     Some 

[44] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

spot  of  pigment  felt  the  influence  of 
light,  and  life  began  to  respond  to  the 
presence  of  the  sun.  Some  long  latent 
power  of  life  was  awakened  on  earth  by 
the  dawn  in  the  sky.  And  then,  how 
it  grew !  Organic  form  succeeded  form, 
species  rose  above  species;  and  this 
little  pigmented  spot  deepened,  became 
a  receptive  cup,  and  at  length  developed 
a  marvellous  photographic  retina,  gain- 
ing a  vital  power  either  to  retain  a  dis- 
tinct image,  or  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye  to  wipe  it  all  away.  And  with  this 
wondrous  retina,  the  eye,  still  develop- 
ing, made  for  itself  a  crystalline  lens, 
and  added  a  mechanism  of  nerves  and 
muscles  for  adapting  itself  instantane- 
ously to  clear  definition  of  things  both 
near  and  far — a  mechanism  so  simple, 
yet  so  fitted  to  its  end,  that  with  all  our 
science  we  cannot  perceive  by  what 
vital  chemistry  it  makes  so  quick  re- 

[45] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

sponse.  Thus — for  this  is  only  a  brief 
summary  of  the  story — through  stage 
after  stage  of  clarifying  and  perfecting, 
the  eye  has  been  called  forth  by  the 
light  in  which  it  sees ;  as  the  eagle  in  its 
lofty  circlings  gazes  at  the  sun,  and 
man  goes  forth  to  his  labor.  From 
such  chapters  of  the  evolution  of  matter 
into  organs  for  intelligent  use  and  the 
joy  of  life,  there  may  be  gained  a  grate- 
ful appreciation  of  the  worth  of  our 
bodily  inheritance.  As  we  finish  read- 
ing the  natural  history  of  the  eye,  we 
may  rejoice  exceedingly  because  we 
have  come  to  ourselves  not  only  as  living 
spirits,  but  as  spirits  having  eyes  to  see. 
Another  truth,  closely  following  this, 
will  lead  us  a  step  further  in  the  natural 
prophecy  of  immortality.  It  is  the  re- 
flection that  some  embodiment  is  of 
permanent  value  to  the  spirit.  This 
has  been  implied  in  what  has  already 

[46] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

been  said,  but  it  should  receive  distinct 
attention.  If  the  body  is  shown  to  be 
a  gift  of  real  value  to  our  present  inner 
life;  if  embodiment  is  to  be  esteemed  as 
a  means  of  spiritual  communion  with 
nature,  through  which  the  personal  life 
is  greatly  enriched,  then  it  is  to  be  re- 
garded also  as  a  gift  not  to  be  recalled; 
it  is  to  be  possessed  as  power  that  may 
be  more  fully  realized  in  some  freedom 
of  activity  and  perfection  of  vision  be- 
yond our  knowledge.  We  may  reason- 
ably conclude  that  if  now  some  body,  it 
may  be  as  yet  a  rudimentary  and  im- 
perfect body,  has  become  of  inestima- 
ble service  to  mind  in  its  happy  com- 
munication with  the  outward  world, 
and  in  the  mutual  recognition  of  friends ; 
then  some  bodiliness  will  always  be  of 
service  to  mind;  and  after  this  brief 
earth  time  the  spirit  in  man  may  expect 
to   receive   the   better   thing   prepared 

[47] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

for  it,  and  to  enter  into  some  future  em- 
bodiment more  finely  organized  for  its 
motion  and  vision  in  the  life  beyond. 

This  expectation  of  life  in  some  bet- 
ter natural  relationship  may  be  said  to 
rest  upon  an  assumption;  but  it  is  a 
scientific  presumption  from  which  such 
hope  takes  wing.  For  it  is  an  expecta- 
tion of  life  which  is  justified  by  the  main 
tendency  of  life  so  far  as  we  can  follow 
it  from  the  beginning  until  now.  It  is 
simply  to  presume  that  life  will  run  on 
the  same  true  lines  hereafter.  It  is 
to  believe  that  it  may  continue  beyond 
our  sight,  as  it  has  begun  within  our 
knowledge.  This  is  a  reasonable  pre- 
sumption because  with  all  its  windings 
the  way  of  life  has  not  thus  far  returned 
upon  itself.  Nor  does  the  energy  of 
life  show  signs  of  giving  out.  Evolu- 
tion stops  at  no  half-way  station;  it 
shows  no  hesitancy  in  its  onward  course. 

[48] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

Moreover,  evolution  has  resulted  thus 
far  not  merely  in  the  gain  of  more  high- 
ly organized  species,  but  it  has  selected 
and  preferred  more  individualized  life; 
it  puts  a  supreme  value  upon  the  in- 
dividual man.  It  has  aimed,  if  we 
may  so  speak,  at  the  development  of 
the  highest  possible  individuality.  It 
has  attained  a  result  worth  perpetuat- 
ing in  personality.  The  personal  life 
has  gained  survival  value.  By  the 
same  sign  it  may  be  expected  to  advance 
to  its  perfection.  For  this  much,  at 
least,  we  know;  that  nature  strives  to 
keep  what  it  has  gained  of  worth.  And 
by  the  same  rule  which  it  has  already  at- 
tained, it  will  also  walk.  The  Son  of 
Man  declared  a  first  principle  of  the  di- 
vine working  in  his  life  when  he  said, 
"I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to  ful- 
fil." Fulfilment  is  first  principle  of 
natural  theology,  as  it  is  of  Christian 

[49] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

divinity.  He  who  could  say  out  of  his 
own  luminous  consciousness  of  the 
divine,  "My  Father  worketh  hitherto 
and  I  work,"  declared  this  to  be  primal 
law  and  essential  truth  of  all  God's 
working,  Not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil. 
We  do  but  make  this  first  truth  of  the 
divine  in  nature  and  the  life  of  man  the 
assurance  of  our  immortal  hope,  when 
we  believe  that  our  God  has  not  pre- 
pared this  body,  and  brought  it  to  its 
present  fitness,  merely  in  the  end  to 
throw  away  the  very  idea  of  embodi- 
ment, as  though  his  own  work  could  not 
be  carried  to  completion  and  were  noth- 
ing worth.  It  is  more  profoundly  nat- 
ural, as  it  is  Christian,  to  think  that  the 
divine  conception  of  embodied  spirit 
shall  be  fulfilled  in  some  more  celestial 
dispensation  of  mind  and  in  larger  per- 
ceptive relations  to  all  the  worlds  of 
space. 

[50] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

Furthermore,  in  such  expectation  of 
life  more  abundant  we  are  accepting, 
as  in  accordance  with  our  natural 
knowledge,  the  first  principle  of  the 
great  resurrection  chapter  that  the  seed 
in  the  earth  has  in  itself  the  potentiality 
of  the  flower  and  the  fruit  that  shall  be 
in  the  air  and  sunshine  above.  What 
we  have  need  to  discern  clearly  and 
assuringly  is  just  this  truth,  that  the 
body  that  dies  is  itself  part  and  moment 
of  a  divine  thought  and  process  of 
spiritual  embodiment;  and  that  this 
body  has  now  preparatory  value  in  re- 
lation to  the  more  spiritual  body  that 
shall  be. 

Although  it  is  impossible  to  under- 
stand what  a  spiritual  body  may  be 
like,  it  is  a  natural  and  simple  faith 
to  hold  that  we  may  acquire  here, 
through  bodily  training  and  exercises, 
greater  mental  facility  for  the  apprecia- 

[51] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

tion  hereafter  of  the  whole  nature  side 
of  our  life.  Whatever  may  be  laid  up 
in  the  soul  through  the  education  of 
eye  or  ear,  or  skill  of  hand,  in  work  and 
pleasure,  may  belong  to  those  treasures 
that  shall  not  be  lost  in  the  heavenly 
completion  of  the  whole  man  hereafter. 
The  artist's  quick  sense  of  the  play  of 
light  and  shade,  and  harmonies  of  color, 
the  musician's  perception  of  all  sweet 
sounds,  the  artisan's  skill  in  cunning 
workmanship, — these  are  personal  ac- 
quisitions which  may  well  form  part  of 
the  preparation  of  this  life  for  the  larger 
opportunities  of  the  world  to  come. 
This  natural  belief  puts  a  future  pre- 
mium upon  all  honest  work.  Eternity 
is  not  to  rob  time  of  any  acquired  values. 
It  is  an  inspiration  in  any  study  or  dis- 
cipline to  cherish  faith  in  its  worth  as  an 
acquisition  of  personal  power  for  im- 
mortality. 

[52] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

Nor  is  this  all  of  this  assurance  of 
life.  More  than  this,  it  is  conceivable 
that  there  may  be  won  through  present 
struggle  with  the  material  world,  and 
carried  naturally  through  death,  a  power 
of  personal  energy  over  material  forces 
that  shall  prepare  us  for  and  give  us 
living  mastery  over  other  conditions 
and  richer  material  for  spiritual  life  and 
joy  beyond  this  present  world.  We 
may  thus  be  gaining  vital  power  to  se- 
lect the  external  conditions,  and  to  win 
our  own  souls  from  the  unseen  world, 
in  which  the  disembodied  spirit  shall 
find  its  life.  For  this  again  is  only  to 
think  through,  from  the  known  into 
the  unknown,  the  first  principle  alike 
of  biology  and  of  divinity  that  what  is 
determinant  and  specific  in  the  germ  is 
not  lost  in  the  whole  subsequent  devel- 
opment; that  it  all  comes  to  fulfilment 
in  the  fruit.     And  for  men  the  harvest 

[53] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

is  the  end  of  the  world.  We  cannot  at 
the  same  time  see  these  present  blossom- 
ings of  God's  thought  in  our  nature, 
and  doubt  the  future  ripening  of  such 
life.  And  the  end  of  the  promise  is  not 
the  new  heavens  only,  but  the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth. 

Herein  lies  the  service  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  resurrection  to  the  natu- 
ral argument  for  immortality.  Even 
in  its  grossest  and  impossible  forms 
this  doctrine  has  borne  witness  to  the 
truth  that  the  present  life,  if  it  is  to 
continue  after  death,  must  go  on  here- 
after as  it  has  been  begun,  in  some 
actual  relations  to  the  outward  universe. 
It  shall  have  some  physical  aspect  and 
power.  The  spirit  is  made  for  some 
embodiment,  and  it  is  not  to  be  con- 
ceived as  losing  an  iota  of  its  capacity 
for  the  nature  side  of  intelligent  exist- 
ence.    On  swifter  wing,  and  with  open 

[54] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

vision,  it  is  to  have  the  freedom  of  the 
skies. 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  the  resur- 
rection, it  is  true,  like  all  other  doc- 
trines of  faith,  is  under  vital  necessity 
of  changing  its  forms  and  adapting  its 
essential  truth  to  the  general  conditions 
of  thought  in  successive  generations. 
In  one  of  its  earlier  and  crude  forms,  as 
a  belief  in  the  literal  resurrection  of  the 
flesh,  it  is  as  impossible  for  us  now  to 
accept  it,  as  it  would  be  for  us  to  receive 
the  old  Ptolemaic  astronomy. 

Mediaeval  pictures  of  martyrs  and 
saints  appearing  in  earthly  apparel  from 
above,  as  masterpieces  of  a  lost  art, 
have  power  still  to  awaken  the  sense  of 
spiritual  beauty — that  feeling  of  some 
transcendent  beauty  which  art  in  the 
highest  always  calls  forth ;  but  they  no 
longer  serve  to  render  religious  faith 
vivid  and  real.    Science  has  indeed  ta- 

[55] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

ken  from  modern  art  this  same  body  of 
the  resurrection;  but  it  has  not  taken 
from  us,  and  it  cannot  rob  the  human 
heart  of  the  essential  truth  of  the  Easter 
faith  in  the  resurrection  of  the  dead. 
It  is  the  faith  that  in  some  manner,  be- 
yond present  experience  and  hence  im- 
possible for  us  now  to  visualize,  our 
human  life  is  to  be  continued  in  its 
wholeness;  the  Christian  hope  is  in 
the  fulfilment  of  the  personal  life 
as  one  life  of  body,  soul,  and  spirit; 
it  is  faith  in  the  completion  of  the 
person  in  the  integrity  of  his  whole 
nature.  So  St.  Paul's  profound  spirit- 
ual insight  discerned  the  law  of  res- 
urrection life,  the  universal  law  of 
development  and  fulfilment,  of  which 
Christ  was  the  first-fruits;  and  the 
law  of  resurrection,  as  it  was  dis- 
covered and  affirmed  in  the  profound 
resurrection  chapter  of  the  New  Testa- 

[56] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

ment,  is  anticipatory  of  and  true  to  the 
best  evolutionary  theology  of  our  age. 
In  whatever  form  it  has  been  held,  or 
may  in  time  be  better  conceived,  the 
Christian  belief  in  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead  is  a  perpetual  denial  of  unbe- 
lief in  the  value  of  embodiment  to  spirit, 
and  an  affirmation  that  what  God  has 
so  marvellously  begun  shall  be  carried 
on  to  full  fruition.  The  promise  is  that 
all  powers  shall  be  put  into  subjection 
to  the  Lord  of  life.  In  this  compre- 
hensive promise  of  the  life  everlasting, 
the  Christian  believer  may  take  delight 
in  the  thought  that  our  love  of  nature 
is  no  passing  pleasure;  that  in  this  joy 
of  heart,  as  well  as  in  all  other  capaci- 
ties of  our  nature,  we  shall  be  satisfied. 
As  we  seek  to  follow  the  natural  argu- 
ment for  immortality,  at  this  point 
another  stepping-stone  lies  just  before 
us  on  which  we  may  find  footing.    The 

[57] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

next  fact  in  order  is  the  present  relative 
imperfection  of  the  body  for  the  spirit. 
This  is  implied  in  the  preceding  para- 
graphs; it  needs  now  to  be  distinctly 
considered.  Although  the  body  is  the 
consummation  of  the  organization  of 
atomic  matter  for  the  use  of  mind,  nev- 
ertheless we  are  by  no  means  come  in 
the  flesh  to  the  end  of  the  conceivable 
possibilities  of  the  adaptations  of  the 
natural  to  the  spiritual  life.  Mind  thus 
far  has  made  a  good  beginning,  but  it 
may  be  only  a  beginning,  in  its  control 
of  material  forces.  Thus  the  original 
vague  sense  of  touch  has  developed  into 
the  finer  sense  of  taste,  the  discriminat- 
ing sense  of  sound,  and  the  localized 
and  clear  sense  of  sight.  But  no  sense 
as  yet  goes  so  far  or  reaches  so  high  as 
thought  may  imagine  it  to  be  carried. 
The  mind  would  receive  with  imme- 
diate perception  the  now  ultra-visible 

[58] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

rays;  we  would  apprehend  with  more 
demonstrable  directness  the  all-perva- 
sive ether,  which  lies  still  unseen  but 
not  unknown  around  us.  Nor  need  we 
dwell  upon  the  partialness  of  our  spirit- 
ual control  of  the  elements  that  are 
transiently  held  in  subjection  to  us  in 
these  bodies.  These  vital  elements 
come  and  go,  ours  to  utilize  for  a  day's 
work,  in  pain  escaping  from  our  mas- 
tery, and  in  the  end  breaking  loose  from 
our  will  to  live.  Death  is  our  final  loss 
of  control  over  this  kind  of  organic  mat- 
ter. It  is  a  contradiction  of  us.  But 
just  at  this  point  where  our  reasoning 
is  brought  to  a  pause;  where  mind 
seems  to  receive  a  final  contradiction 
from  matter  and  life  is  denied  by 
death,  hope  finds  a  further  prospect 
opening  before  it,  and  faith  in  immor- 
tality may  take  a  new  departure.  For 
we  have  this  reassuring  knowledge  that 

[59] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

the  body  which  escapes  from  our  sub- 
jection at  death  is  by  no  means  the 
final  conceivable  perfection  of  body; 
other  obedience,  and  a  service  to  the 
spirit  of  more  ethereal  matter  than  as 
yet  appears,  may  with  good  reason  be 
supposed.  Hence  both  from  the  com- 
parative perfection  of  the  human  brain 
in  relation  to  the  past  organization  of 
matter  for  mind,  and  also  from  its  im- 
perfection in  relation  to  a  conceivable 
future,  we  may  gain  a  true  and  pro- 
found insight  into  the  prophetic  sig- 
nificance of  the  present  life.  If  it  were 
not  so,  our  hopes  might  fall.  If  indeed 
we  were  scientifically  compelled  to  think 
that  in  this  existing  nervous  system  and 
physical  organization,  through  which 
we  now  exist  in  communication  with 
an  external  world,  the  last  material 
adaptations  for  personal  life  were  ex- 
hausted;  if  we  were  forced  to  assume 

[60] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

that  in  known  physics  and  chemistry  the 
end  of  all  matter  in  its  fitness  for  mind 
has  been  reached;  then  a  halt  would 
indeed  be  called  to  our  faith,  and  we 
should  stand  at  last,  in  the  full  energy 
of  personal  life,  at  the  height  of  nat- 
ure's achievement,  but  in  the  hopeless 
isolation  of  our  self-consciousness,  and, 
after  all,  ourselves  no  better  than  the 
beasts  that  perish.  But  it  is  not  so. 
Are  we  not  now  discovering  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  all  previous  science  of  atomic 
matter?  The  last  stroke  of  physical 
science  has  shivered  the  atom  itself.  It 
is  displaying  radiant  energies  before 
undreamed  of.  That  last  indivisible 
point  of  matter  is  caught  in  the  act  of 
setting  free  emanations  and  rays  of 
different  kinds  and  of  amazing  periods 
of  duration.  It  might  almost  be  said 
that  the  atom  is  found  among  nature's 
prophets.     Physical  science  is  speaking 

[61] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

as  with  new  tongues.  What  matter 
ultimately  is,  what  latent  energies  are 
yet  to  be  revealed  in  the  depths  and 
silences  of  space,  who  can  tell  ?  What 
finite  intelligence  far  back  in  the  be- 
ginning of  days  could  have  imagined  the 
forms  and  combinations  into  which  the 
ether  in  the  course  of  time  has  been 
transformed  ?  Though  a  finite  intelli- 
gence, before  ever  the  worlds  were 
created,  had  seen  the  Sower  going  forth 
to  sow  in  the  fields  of  infinite  space, 
could  such  finite  intelligence  have  con- 
ceived of  the  clusters  of  the  stars,  and 
the  beauty  of  the  earth,  and  the  joy 
of  life  which  it  is  ours  to  know  ?  And 
the  full  harvest  is  not  yet  reaped.  Who 
of  us  has  a  measuring  rod  for  the  way 
of  further  evolution  ?  We  who  are  just 
beginning  to  learn  how  much  farther 
the  Creator  has  gone  with  radiant  mat- 
ter than  we  had  dreamed,  cannot  pre- 

[62] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

sume  to  say  that  he  can  go  no  farther 
either  with  it  or  us.  Now  before  our 
eyes  invisible  and  unsuspected  rays  of 
radium  are  revealed  as  sparkles  of  light 
by  their  impacts  upon  a  prepared 
screen.  Can  we  exclude  from  possible 
human  experience  celestial  influences 
that  may  be  as  present  and  pervasive 
though  as  yet  undetected  ?  And  if  the 
dissolving  of  an  atom  is  the  letting  loose 
of  emanations  hitherto  all  unknown,  we 
may  well  hesitate  to  believe  that  the 
breaking  up  of  this  mortality  can  set 
free  no  finer  radiances  with  which,  as 
in  a  garment  of  light,  the  spirit  may  be 
clothed  upon  with  immortality. 

We  have  been  thinking  thus  far  of  the 
unfinished  personality  of  man  on  the 
bodily  side;  we  find  it  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  the  natural  may  germinate 
into  some  more  spiritualized  embodi- 
ment.    But  besides  this,  in  mind  as 

[63] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

well  as  body,  man  is  an  unfinished  be- 
ing. He  has  been  begun,  but  not  ended. 
He  has  by  no  means  exhausted  as  yet 
his  personal  dynamics.  A  man  may 
have  much  to  do  in  enlarging  his  own 
soul.  And  this  insignificant  earth,  on 
which  he  has  just  come  to  himself,  as 
a  little  child  once  said,  is  not  big  enough 
for  him.  Already  in  thought  he  tran- 
scends it.  In  purpose  he  outlives  it. 
He  has  not  time  in  this  earthly  life  to 
attain  his  full  maturity.  His  intellect 
is  capable  of  indefinite  growth ;  and  he 
can  love  for  eternity.  Furthermore, 
even  in  the  weakness  of  his  mortality 
man  is  possessed  of  the  will  to  live. 
That  is  a  supernal  virtue  of  personality. 
The  personal  will  to  live  is  a  force  with 
which  the  universe  has  to  reckon. 
There  is  no  energy  so  mighty  as  that; 
none  save  only  the  will  of  God.  It 
defies  the  very  powers  that  rise  to  over- 

[64] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

come  it.  Pascal's  memorable  word  that, 
though  man  is  as  a  reed,  he  is  a  thinking 
reed,  and  he  is  superior  to  the  world 
that  kills  him  because  he  knows  that  he 
dies,  is  profoundly  true,  likewise,  of 
man's  will  to  live  even  while  he  dies. 
So  far  forth  as  we  can  follow  the  will 
to  live,  in  a  true  man  it  never  ceases  to 
be;  even  in  dying  it  is  active.  For  it 
has  been  observed  with  deep  significance 
that  man  is  not  merely  passive  but 
active  in  dying.  An  animal  will  fly  with 
instinctive  fear  from  the  peril  that  pur- 
sues it;  man  goes  forth  to  meet  his 
death.  In  purpose  and  in  will  he  acts 
while  he  is  dying  as  to  the  body.  He 
goes  down  into  the  valley;  often  with 
conscious  determination  we  may  see 
him  enter  the  dark  waters.  We  may 
not  follow  him  with  our  eyes  as  he  goes 
through  the  mists  up  the  heights  be- 
yond;  but  sometimes  we  may  see  him 

[65] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

taking  with  conscious  self-control  the 
last  step — and  he  is  gone ;  his  communi- 
cation with  us  is  broken ;  but  up  to  his 
latest  breath,  and  even  as  his  heart  beats 
its  last  pulsation,  the  man  is  the  same 
man  we  have  always  known,  thinking, 
purposing,  willing,  loving,  as  he  had 
always  done.  Death  comes  to  him  as 
another  experience  of  life — another 
event  to  be  met  by  his  unbroken  will  to 
live.  That  personal  will  to  live  has 
been  and  is  a  renewing  and  constructive 
force.  It  has  made  the  man  what  he  is; 
and  to  some  extent  it  has  sustained  and 
fashioned  his  mortal  body.  The  will 
to  live  is  a  formative  energy  in  relation 
to  this  present  environment;  why  not 
then  in  relation  to  other  environment? 
Herein  is  discovered  a  superior  energy 
working  in  relation  to  a  lower  element; 
a  spiritual  power  is  disclosed,  active  and 
formative,  in  the  midst  of  existing  con- 
[06] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

ditions  for  its  exercise.  What  can  put 
a  stop  to  its  activity  ?  Nothing  that  we 
know  of.  What  may  prevent  its  exer- 
cise in  different  conditions,  in  relation  to 
material  even  more  subservient  perhaps 
to  its  fashioning  than  we  may  now  ap- 
prehend ? 

One  may  fall  back  at  this  point  into 
the  old  difficulty  in  which  a  desire  to  be- 
lieve in  immortality  has  often  been 
swamped.  Admit,  it  may  be  said,  that 
all  this  is  possible  and  seemingly  quite 
natural;  but  after  all  no  one  knows. 
We  have  no  experience  of  life  except 
as  bound  to  this  body  of  death.  This  is 
true,  but  not  the  whole  of  the  truth. 
We  know  ourselves  not  merely  as  bound 
to  this  mortality;  we  know  ourselves 
now  and  here  as  mind  bringing  the  body 
into  subjection  to  itself;  we  have  ex- 
perience of  ourselves  in  the  body,  but 
not  altogether  of  it.     We  recognize  this 

[67] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

body  as  of  value  to  us;  we  do  not  recog- 
nize ourselves  as  belonging  to  it.  We 
have  been  maintaining  that  in  and 
through  these  bodies  we  live  in  a  rich 
relationship  with  nature,  all  things  be- 
ing ours.  But  it  does  not  follow  that 
we  are  therefore  to  be  disinherited  when 
this  body  fails  us.  Even  now  while  in 
the  body  we  may  be  forming  other  con- 
nections, there  may  be  growing  finer 
faculties,  for  freer  fellowship  with  nat- 
ure,— the  greater  nature  reaching  be- 
yond the  stars.  At  all  events  present 
experience  contains  more  than  the  fact 
of  death;  it  comprehends  the  higher 
law  and  spiritual  energy  of  life.  We 
know  something  of  the  lordship  of  life, 
even  though  we  die. 

We  are  further  reassured  in  this  natu- 
ral expectation  of  life  by  a  significant 
fact  which  recent  biology  has  added  to 
our  knowledge.    Hitherto  we  have  been 

[68] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

wont  to  assume  that  death  came  as  a 
foe  of  life;  now  we  are  learning  that 
death  itself  first  entered  into  nature  as 
the  servant  of  life,  and  by  it  in  the 
course  of  evolution  the  way  was  opened 
to  more  life  and  better.  Death  itself 
has  proved  to  be  a  great  means  of  de- 
veloping more  organized,  sensitive,  and 
responsive  life  in  nature.  Indeed  the 
ascent  of  life  would  have  been  impos- 
sible, had  it  not  been  for  the  interven- 
tion of  death.  The  natural  history  of 
death  shows  it  to  have  been  a  minister 
of  life.  Throughout  the  whole  process 
of  evolution  death  has  been  the  servant, 
and  life  the  lord.  Why  should  this  law 
and  service  be  revoked  with  the  com- 
ing of  man  ?  The  end  of  the  evolution 
of  species  is  the  perfect  individual. 
Why  then,  as  death  has  served  hitherto 
the  upgrowth  of  species,  should  it  not 
complete  its  ministry  by  setting  free  the 

[69] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

individual  person,  in  whom  all  the  past 
succession  of  species  is  fulfilled  ? 

Whittier's  familiar  lines  are  thus 
seen  to  contain  a  double  truth:  "Life  is 
ever  lord  of  death";  and  "Love  can 
never  lose  its  own."  Both  in  body  and 
in  mind,  in  fellowship  with  nature,  and 
in  his  own  heart,  man  is  made  after  the 
power  of  an  endless  life. 

In  the  reasoning  thus  far  pursued  we 
have  sought  to  follow  real  analogies  be- 
tween things  natural  and  spiritual.  Such 
analogies  are  to  be  distinguished  from 
fanciful  resemblances  or  merely  illus- 
trative representations.  A  fancy  is  an 
artificial  composite  of  resemblances, 
put  together,  it  may  be,  with  pleasing 
skill;  it  is  a  mental  association  of  simi- 
larities between  things  that  may  have 
no  real  affinities;  it  is  like  the  acciden- 
tal patterns  that  are  to  be  seen  with 
the    turning    of   a    kaleidoscope.    But 

[70] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

the  scientific  use  of  the  imagination  is 
wholly  different;  an  illuminative  imagi- 
nation is  an  extension  of  vision  into  the 
further  truth,  and  along  the  real  rela- 
tions of  things.  It  unifies  in  the  mental 
conception  what  is  really  one  in  nature 
and  life.  Ruskin  has  rightly  defined 
imagination  as  the  power  of  seeing 
things  as  they  are.  It  is  a  mental  vis- 
ualization of  some  harmonizing  truth, 
some  common  principle,  or  vitalizing 
energy  that  runs  through  things  that 
differ,  and  binds  the  worlds  into  a  cos- 
mic whole.  In  such  use  of  the  imagi- 
nation, whether  it  be  scientific  or 
spiritual,  we  are  but  doing  what  that 
early  modern  astronomer  did  when  he 
said  he  was  thinking  God's  thoughts 
after  him.  So  likewise  a  mediaeval 
theologian,  who  had  much  of  the  in- 
tense modern  passion  for  some  vision 
of  the  ultimate  Reality,  St.  Augustine, 

[71] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

gained  a  true  imaginative  perception  of 
the  higher  order  and  dramatic  unity 
of  nature  and  history  when  he  said,  the 
creation  is  a  poem  of  the  Divine  ideas. 
Whenever  we  can  trace  real  analogies 
between  things  natural  and  things  spir- 
itual, we  can  trust  such  principles  with 
reasonable  assurance.  They  are  dis- 
closures of  the  structural  lines  of  the 
universe.  They  are  the  principles  of 
reason  that  run  through  nature,  and 
bind  together  all  the  spheres.  It  gives 
to  our  reason  a  sense  of  sureness  when 
we  find  them  and  follow  them.  We 
shall  not  be  liable  to  prove  mistaken  in 
our  essential  faiths,  if  we  have  good 
reason  to  believe  that  we  are  not  chas- 
ing after  illusive  fancies,  but  are  keeping 
in  the  way  of  the  same  law  of  life  from 
one  field  to  another,  from  the  least  to 
the  greatest  revelation  of  life,  and  press- 
ing  on  in  the  way   of  the   same  law 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

of  development  toward  the  goal  in 
the  world  to  come.  When  knowledge 
reaches  the  borders  of  the  material 
world,  imaginative  reason,  continuing 
along  the  same  lines,  ventures,  as  far  as 
it  can,  into  the  unknown,  and  forms  a 
working  theory  concerning  things  su- 
pra-sensible. Immortality  cannot  in 
this  way  be  demonstrated ;  but  the  con- 
tinuance of  life  on  the  same  principles, 
in  accordance  with  real  analogies,  is 
rendered  credible.  Unbelief  will  thus 
appear  to  be  more  irrational,  unnatural, 
and  contradictory  of  known  truths  than 
belief.  The  immortal  hope  is  the  out- 
come of  the  best  experience  of  life. 

There  are  some  men  of  scientific 
training  who  now  would  venture  far- 
ther than  this.  They  not  only  hold  that 
real  analogies,  such  as  those  with  which 
these  pages  have  been  occupied,  leave 
us  with  a  reasonable  hope  of  immor- 

[73] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

tality;  they  look  with  some  confidence 
to  see  the  progress  of  investigation 
push  still  farther  back  the  confines  of 
the  known,  and  more  than  half  expect 
that  some  sensible  sign  from  beyond  the 
grave  may  be  credibly  communicated 
as  the  result  of  further  psychical  re- 
searches. They  ask  whether  it  is  not 
now  possible  for  us  to  verify  in  some 
occult  phenomena  actual  influences 
from  disincarnate  spirits.  If  it  be  so, 
faith,  they  think,  hard  pressed  in  con- 
flict with  the  materialism  of  these  days, 
may  receive  much  needed  help  in  a 
time  of  need.  Even  a  slight  extension 
of  evidence  of  the  continued  existence 
of  departed  spirits,  though  it  might 
bring  little  knowledge  of  their  state, 
would  prove  a  providential  re-enforce- 
ment of  our  expectation  of  immortality. 
Before  accepting  or  declining  alto- 
gether the  help  of  such  alleged  com- 
[74] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

munications,  we  have  need  to  wait  for 
much  more  definite  results  of  investiga- 
tions of  the  border-land  around  our 
conscious  life.  Recent  experiments  in 
this  direction  have  extended  the  range 
of  the  possible  working  of  mind  be- 
yond the  limit  of  the  senses.  Telepathy 
can  hardly  be  regarded  longer  as  a  word 
without  some  psychic  meaning.  The 
threshold  of  consciousness,  the  sublimi- 
nal consciousness,  the  powers  of  mind 
in  abnormal  states,  and  their  limita- 
tions,— these  and  kindred  phenomena 
indicate  that  there  is  something  more 
for  us  still  to  know  about  ourselves, 
and  that  we  may  be  possessed  of  latent 
faculties,  and  are  capable  of  farther- 
reaching  influence  than  we  had  sup- 
posed. It  would  not  be  a  thing  in- 
credible if  mind  should  be  found  in 
some  cases  to  use  a  swift  and  extensive 
wireless  telegraphy  of  its  own.     The 

[75] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

openness  of  the  material  texture  and 
web  of  things  is  not  a  secret  to  physical 
science,  however  closed  it  seems  to  our 
eyes.  The  complex  field  of  lines  of 
force,  the  ceaseless  pulsations  of  ethe- 
real waves,  the  interpenetration  of  ele- 
mental energies,  the  play  to  and  fro 
and  everywhither  of  diverse  motions, — 
all  these  newer  ideas  are  easier  for  a 
trained  scientific  man  to  represent  in 
his  higher  mathematics  and  to  imagine 
in  his  working  theories,  than  it  is  for 
the  ordinary  man  to  comprehend.  This 
being  so,  it  is  unreasonable  to  regard 
any  supra-sensible  manifestations  as 
unworthy  scientific  observation  and 
analysis.  It  would  be  scientific  pre- 
sumption to  regard  as  impossible  any 
manifestations  which  might  serve  to 
extend  knowledge  in  any  direction.  Nor 
do  frequent  exposures  of  fraud  exhaust 
the  field  of  abnormal  or  super-normal 

[76] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

psychic  phenomena.  Patient  and  pro- 
longed research  in  this  as  in  other  fields, 
combined  with  scientific  ingenuity  in 
methods  and  instruments  of  precise  ex- 
periment, may  yet  open  definite  knowl- 
edge in  this  outlying  region  of  life.  But 
the  utmost  that  may  safely  be  said  now 
is,  that  around  clear  self-conscious- 
ness there  seems  to  lie,  as  it  were,  a 
magnetic  mental  field  pervaded  by 
lines  of  force  as  yet  untraced  and 
undetermined. 

While  requiring  this  much  from  the 
scientific  side  in  relation  to  such  mys- 
terious happenings,  we  may  add  an- 
other reflection  from  the  religious  point 
of  view.  Is  it  necessarily  to  be  true  of 
every  generation  since  Christ  to  the  end 
of  time  that  though  it  seeks  for  a  sign, 
no  sign  shall  be  given  it  ?  The  age  of 
his  mighty  works  lies  already  in  the  far 
distance,  and  men  generally  are  become 

[77] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

sceptical  of  all  miracles.  They  cannot 
verify  the  evidences  of  the  supernatural 
in  the  past,  and  they  see  none  in  the 
present.  Christianity  to-day  is  belief 
in  Christ,  not  so  much  for  the  works' 
sake,  but  for  all  that  the  Christ  has  be- 
come in  human  history;  for  what  he 
himself  is  now  in  the  life  of  the  world. 
But  from  this  it  is  not  of  necessity  to  be 
concluded  that  ways  of  more  direct 
spiritual  manifestation,  once  perhaps 
open,  have  been  forever  closed.  It 
is  quite  possible  to  conceive  that  new 
modes  of  spiritual  communication  might 
be  providentially  disclosed,  if  ever  the 
need  should  arise  for  more  evidential 
presence  of  the  Spirit  in  the  life  of  hu- 
manity. It  is  further  possible  to  sup- 
pose that  by  knocking  man  some  time 
may  find  doors  opening  outward  into 
the  unseen,  which  before  were  closed. 
We  cannot  therefore  exclude  as  either 

[78] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

naturally  or  morally  impossible  such 
spiritual  manifestations  as  at  any  time 
may  present  themselves  for  critical  ex- 
amination. A  reserve  of  evidence  for 
the  immanence  in  nature  of  the  tran- 
scendent God,  as  well  as  for  our  hope 
of  life  after  death,  may  be  providentially 
held  back  until  in  the  progress  alike  of 
human  knowledge  and  need  man  may 
be  able  to  draw  for  himself  upon  such  re- 
serves of  knowledge ;  until  some  gener- 
ation may  be  scientifically  wise  enough 
to  avail  itself  of  the  spiritual  disclosures 
of  the  natural  world,  which  it  may  need 
to  save  its  higher  life. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  immediate  spiritual 
communications  are  not  as  yet  part  of 
the  providential  training  by  which  we 
are  to  be  made  strong  to  hold  and  to 
practise  our  faith  in  immortality.  We 
must  live  as  immortals,  if  we  would  be- 
lieve as  immortals.     There  is  little  at 

[79] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

present  to  add  to  the  modern  argument 
for  man's  survival  after  death  from  the 
voluminous  results  of  psychical  re- 
search— little  unless  it  be  an  increasing 
sense  of  wonder.  The  most  competent 
investigators  acknowledge  that  they 
know  not  much  more  than  when  they 
began;  but  they  add  that  the  little 
which  they  have  learned  leads  them 
to  think  that  there  is  much  more 
which  in  time  will  be  known  con- 
cerning the  spiritual  influences  which 
work  within  ourselves,  and  amid  which 
we  live. 

To  return  from  these  speculations, 
finding  no  certain  light  in  the  flashings 
upon  peculiarly  sensitive  minds  of  illu- 
mination from  no  common  source,  we 
stand  again  on  sure  ground  when  we 
rest  our  faith  on  the  supreme  fact  of  per- 
sonality. We  know  in  what  we  believe, 
when  we  realize  what  the  personal  life 

[80] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

contains  within  its  own  spiritual  energy 
and  will. 

After  all  has  been  reasoned  and  said, 
one  shadow  sometimes  will  fall  across 
a  clear  Christian  faith:  it  is  the  doubt 
which  arises  from  inability  to  imagine 
how  these  things  can  be.  It  is  well  to 
recognize  the  fact  that  the  last  difficulty 
of  a  well-reasoned  and  assured  hope  is  a 
difficulty  of  the  imagination.  It  is  im- 
agination that  fails  us,  not  reason  that 
betrays  us,  in  the  very  presence  of  death. 
Our  thoughts  become  silent  when  we 
long  to  know  how  and  where  those  who 
have  vanished  from  our  homes  are 
living  now. 

In  such  hours  of  utter  bereavement, 
our  questionings  return  into  our  hearts 
unanswered.  In  utter  inability  to  con- 
ceive of  the  present  state  of  those  who 
but  yesterday  were  with  us,  we  sit  by  our 

[81] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

fireside,  having  drawn  the  curtains  to 
shut  out  the  lonely  mystery  of  the  night, 
thinking  of  them  as  they  were,  and  as 
living  and  loving  still,  nearer  perhaps 
than  we  may  know.  Our  memories  be- 
come our  prophets  of  the  life,  theirs  and 
ours,  which  is  to  be;  their  remembered 
faces  look  down  upon  us,  as  our  hopes, 
from  the  unseen. 

In  such  moods,  of  one  truth  we  may 
be  assured:  the  splendid  personal  gifts 
of  memory  and  imagination  have  not 
been  bestowed  upon  us  to  empty  our 
hearts  of  joy,  and  to  fill  them  with  vis- 
ionless  sorrow.  They  are  powers  meant 
to  enrich  and  to  sustain  us  in  any  trial 
and  grief.  They  are  always  to  be  ar- 
rayed on  the  brave,  bright,  hopeful  side 
of  life.  They  should  be  trained  and 
used  to  help  us  do  happily  our  daily 
work.  To  the  reasons  for  belief  in 
immortality,  therefore,  something  may 

[82] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

be  added  concerning  the  cultivation  and 
exercise  of  imagination  for  the  sake  of 
rendering  more  real  and  vivid  the 
spiritual  side  of  our  existence. 

The  aid  of  religious  symbolism  may 
be  intelligently  accepted  for  the  pur- 
pose of  quickening  religious  feelings  and 
faith.  All  spiritual  truths  are  brought 
to  us  in  some  symbolic  representations. 
Words  are  symbols  of  realities.  Images 
are  not  idols  when  they  lend  some  nearer 
sense  of  reality  to  faith  in  that  which  is 
transcendent  and  divine.  It  is  when  the 
symbol  is  substituted  for  the  reality; 
when  a  form  of  words  is  held  as  the 
divine  revelation  itself;  when  the  sac- 
ramental emblems  are  received  as  in 
themselves  the  real  presence,  that  idola- 
try of  creed  or  worship  may  enter  in. 
Hence  what  is  needed  for  the  present 
aid  of  faith  is  to  choose  those  forms  of 
representation  of  things  invisible  and 

[83] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

eternal  that  may  fall  in  most  naturally 
with  our  modern  habits  of  mind.  Every 
age  must  find  for  itself  the  forms  and 
symbols  best  fitted  and  most  natural  to 
its  thought.  But  it  should  use  its  full 
power  of  imagination  in  visualizing  and 
rendering  vivid  its  beliefs.  It  would  be  a 
barren  age,  scorched  by  its  own  light, 
if  it  should  not  create  for  itself  a  relig- 
ious poetry  and  art.  Modern  science 
has  made  for  itself  symbols  of  forces  and 
motions  that  run  into  the  mathematical 
infinite.  One  must  be  possessed  of 
power  of  imaginative  representation  to 
become  a  great  discoverer  in  science. 
It  is  no  less  true  that  one  must  exercise 
the  power  of  spiritual  imagination  to 
be  a  great  believer.  In  either  case  we 
approach  thereby  into  closer  touch  with 
the  living  truth;  we  see  revealed  the 
unifying  principle,  the  fundamental 
reality.     The  poet  of  the  spiritual  is 

[84] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

always  to  be  looked  for.  It  may  be  said 
that  only  in  the  mediaeval  time,  when 
the  heavens  were  nearer  earth  than  now, 
could  Dante  have  traversed  the  celestial 
spheres  and  become  the  great  poet  of 
the  invisible.  And  still  the  spell  of  his 
imagination  falls  upon  our  thought, 
though  we  know  how  far  the  stars  have 
receded  from  us.  But  now  physical 
theories  are  become  too  sublimated  to 
render  scenic  imaginations  of  things 
celestial  congenial  to  the  modern  mind. 
Nevertheless  the  poet  of  the  ideal  and 
the  supersensible  is  not  to  be  banished 
by  the  extension  of  knowledge.  From 
our  more  intimate,  as  well  as  vaster 
knowledge  of  the  universe,  the  poet  of 
to-day  and  of  to-morrow  may  draw 
fresh  and  rare  material  to  weave  into 
the  imagery  of  his  song  of  human  trust 
and  immortal  hope. 

Every  one  who  would  render  real  to 

[85] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

himself  his  personal  faith  is  called  to 
make  right  and  'lelpf ul  use  of  his  imagi- 
nation, to  be  in  his  own  thoughts  the 
poet  of  his  faith.  He  must  accept  the 
help  of  the  spiritual  suggestions  of  the 
world  in  which  he  sees  and  lives.  He 
must  not  only  read  the  parables  of  the 
Master  who  without  a  parable  spake  not 
to  his  disciples ;  he  must  seek  to  imitate 
the  Master  in  the  parable-making  habit. 
Believers  may  train  their  ears  to  hear 
the  higher  meanings  in  common  things ; 
they  may  open  their  eyes  to  discern 
the  ever  fresh  suggestiveness  of  nature. 
A  familiar  landscape,  some  remembered 
scene,  a  look  out  of  the  window,  a 
momentary  glory  in  the  sky,  or  evening 
peace  on  the  hills,  may  awaken  thoughts 
beyond  all  words.  From  the  silence  of 
nature  a  voice  from  beyond  may  seem 
about  to  speak.  A  gleam  over  the  face 
of  nature  may  come  and  go  as  a  spiritual 

[86] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

expression,  and  leave  us  feeling  our- 
selves in  the  presence  of  an  infinite 
friendliness.  From  such  spiritual  as- 
pects of  nature  and  intimations  of  some- 
thing diviner  than  is  seen,  we  return  to 
take  up  the  commonplace  of  life  with 
thoughts  refreshed  and  a  cheerful  light  of 
spirit  within  us  to  brighten  the  daily  care. 
Even  passing  fancies  of  what  things 
unseen  may  be  like,  though  they  be 
as  children's  imaginations  or  as  our 
dreams,  if  they  be  not  held  too  fast,  and 
be  suffered  to  fall  from  us  as  quickly  as 
they  come,  may  have  a  quickening 
touch,  and  impart  a  happier  sense  of 
invisible  presences  we  fain  would  see. 
Freely  and  gratefully  then  we  are  to 
use,  as  best  we  may,  the  gift  to  faith 
of  the  symbolizing  imagination.  No 
poet's  utmost  flight  can  enter  within 
the  veil ;  but  the  least  spiritual  imagina- 
tion may  help  us  trust  that  it  is  only 

[87] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

a    veil   between   the   earthly    and    the 
heavenly. 

There  will  come  indeed  times  when 
all  symbolism  will  lose  its  quickening 
virtue,  and  every  imagination  fail ;  when 
the  mystery  of  the  world  overshadows 
us  and  faith  itself  seems  lost  as  in  a 
vast  and  homeless  wonder;  whether 
there  be  prophecies  or  tongues,  they 
shall  cease;  but  love  never  faileth.  At 
such  times  when  all  else  fails,  we  shall 
have  need  of  the  last  lesson  which  the 
great  Parable  Maker  taught  his  dis- 
ciples. For  when  the  hour  of  his  de- 
parture drew  nigh,  he  spake  to  them 
without  a  parable.  He  did  not  then 
bid  them  look  abroad  and  see  the 
sower  going  forth  to  sow,  or  to  lift  up 
their  eyes  and  behold  the  fields  white 
for  the  harvest.  He  did  not  remind 
them  of  the  lilies  of  the  field  or  the  birds 
of  the   air.     He   opened   to   them   no 

[88] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

visions  of  the  New  Jerusalem  coming 
down  from  God  out  of  heaven.  He 
looked  into  their  hearts,  and  spake  di- 
rectly from  his  own.  He  himself  was 
to  them  in  that  last  hour  the  revelation 
of  the  Father,  His  God  and  their  God. 
Only  these  two  simplest  things — the 
bread  of  life  and  the  cup  of  communion 
— were  the  symbols  which  he  blessed 
to  bring  him  always  to  remembrance. 
His  last  and  most  definite  revelation  of 
the  life  beyond  death  he  put  in  the  plain 
and  common  language  of  our  human 
homes  and  fellowship;  for  he  said  of 
his  and  their  future  state  such  personal 
words  as  these:  I,  thou,  we:  all  made 
perfect  in  one :  I  will  come  to  you :  ye 
shall  see  me :  where  I  am,  there  ye  may 
be  also :  continue  ye  in  my  love.  Thus 
he  spoke  of  what  shall  be,  as  one  might 
speak  of  what  had  been.  He  taught 
what  heaven  is  in  personal  words. 

[89] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

Years  afterward  that  disciple  who 
had  known  him  best,  in  his  last  letters  to 
those  who  had  fellowship  with  him  in 
the  life  that  he  had  seen  manifested  in 
the  Master,  drops  all  the  apocalyptic 
imagery  of  the  city  of  God;  St.  John 
likewise  puts  his  sure  hope  of  immor- 
tality in  the  same  simple  words  of  the 
abiding  personal  life;  for  he  said  with- 
out a  parable:  Perfect  love  casteth  out 
fear:  now  are  we  the  sons  of  God, 
and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be:  we  shall  be  like  him,  for  we 
shall  see  him  even  as  he  is. 

"And  they  shall  see  his  face."  The 
perfect  symbol  of  the  spirit  is  the  face. 
It  is  the  clear  disclosure  to  our  eyes  of 
the  other  than  ourself.  The  fairest 
thing  that  we  know  is  not  a  star,  "when 
only  one  is  shining  in  the  sky";  it  is 
not  the  beauty  of  the  earth;  it  is  the 
human   face.      What  does  it  signify? 

[90] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

What  does  it  mean  to  us?  One  of 
Darwin's  best  studies  was  his  account 
of  the  physiology  of  the  expressions  in 
animals  and  in  man.  He  has  taught 
us  the  alphabet  and  some  of  the  simple 
combinations  of  letters  in  the  natural 
language  of  expression.  The  human 
face  has  acquired  a  language  of  its  own. 
It  is  the  first  speech  of  intelligence;  it 
is  the  one  universal  language  which  all 
men  understand  at  sight.  It  is  the  di- 
rect communication  of  spirit  to  spirit; 
it  is  at  once  question  and  answer;  face 
answereth  to  the  face  of  man.  In  this 
expressiveness  of  a  human  face  there  is 
something  more  than  the  forms  of  the 
Darwinian  grammar  of  it  to  be  ex- 
plained ;  what  is  it  within  us  that  makes 
use  of  these  expressive  changes  of  the 
face  ?  What  is  it  that  conveys  by  these 
expressive  variables  a  meaning  all  its 
own  ?    What  spirit  is  this  that  plays  at 

[91] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

will  upon  this  marvellous  refinement  of 
gross  matter,  causing  it  to  reveal  its 
secrets,  or  veiling  them  at  its  pleasure  ? 
The  eye  is  material,  but  the  light  in  it  is 
human.  There  is  something  in  a  glance 
that  is  more  than  the  action  of  a  muscle. 
Physiological  changes,  with  marvellous 
quickness,  telegraph  meanings  of  mind 
and  heart,  messages  of  love  and  joy,  of 
care  and  sorrow,  of  will  and  purpose,  of 
life  and  death.  The  human  face  divine 
is  the  fairest  product  of  evolution  which 
our  eyes  may  see;  and  it  is  of  and  for 
the  spiritual.  Other  forms  fairer  and 
more  spiritual  there  may  be,  for  it  doth 
not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be; — the 
face  of  an  angel,  the  transfigured  coun- 
tenance of  the  Lord  on  the  holy  mount, 
and  the  faces  of  our  blessed  dead,  whom 
after  a  little  while  we  shall  see  again, 
the  same  but  changed  as  from  glory 
unto  glory. 

[92] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

Here  the  belief  in  immortality  must 
rest  before  the  revelation  of  the  personal 
life  in  its  full  power,  at  its  highest  and 
its  best  in  the  Son  of  man.  Here  reason- 
ing from  nature  ends,  and  faith  abides, 
at  the  last  ascent  of  life,  on  the  height 
where  He  to  whom  the  Spirit  was  given 
without  measure  looked  up  into  the 
heavenlies,  and  knew  the  Father.  The 
sciences  must  take  account  of  the  per- 
fection of  life  in  the  person  of  Christ. 
We  cannot  live  and  die  as  though  the 
sun  had  not  risen,  for  the  light  of  his 
spirit  now  fills  our  skies.  Modern  sci- 
ence will  not  think  the  whole  process 
and  intent  of  evolution  through,  until 
it  shall  come  to  the  Christ,  and  be- 
hold all  that  the  Jesus  of  history  has 
become,  and  now  is  in  the  light  of  the 
world.  No  full  and  final  answer  to  our 
human  questionings  of  life  and  death 
and  the  world  to  come  can  be  given  ex- 

[93] 


MODERN  BELIEF 

cept  in  the  presence  of  the  perfect  man- 
ifestation of  life  in  the  Man  of  men,  as 
we  behold  his  glory,  even  the  glory  of 
the  Father  which  was  from  the  begin- 
ning— the  glory  that  invests  all  lives 
which  are  lived  in  the  same  mind  that 
was  in  him. 

For  this  generation,  then,  the  ultimate 
reason  for  belief  in  the  transfiguration 
of  this  body  into  the  spiritual,  and  the 
continuance  of  the  whole  personal  life 
after  death,  is  not  so  much  the  witness 
of  the  first  disciples  to  the  empty  tomb, 
or  any  possible  manifestation  to  the 
senses  of  what  lies  within  the  veil;  it 
is  above  all  that  great  assertion  of 
Peter's  Pentecostal  faith  that  it  is  not 
possible  for  God's  Holy  One  to  see  cor- 
ruption. The  living  Christ  cannot  be 
holden  by  death.  The  impossibility 
of  death  overcoming  life,  such  life  as 
was  seen  in  the  Christ,  such  life  as  is 

[94] 


IN  IMMORTALITY 

witnessed  in  men  of  his  Spirit, — that 
was  the  last,  full  assurance  of  the  Apos- 
tolic faith ;  and  it  is  our  reasonable  hope 
in  the  midst  of  all  knowledge.  Having 
fellowship  in  the  life  which  is  too  divine 
to  perish,  we  wait  for  the  fulfilment  of 
faith  in  vision.  The  perfection  of  sense 
is  the  eye.  And  God  is  light.  The 
Scriptures  of  the  world's  imperishable 
faith  call  us  alike  the  children  of  the 
resurrection  and  the  children  of  the 
light.     Faith  shall  end  in  perfect  vision. 


[95] 


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